Wole Soyinka
I take friendship very seriously.Collection: Friendship
I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.Collection: Morning
Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.Collection: Truth
And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.Collection: Learning
Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.Collection: Education
I like my peace and quiet whenever I can grab it.Collection: Peace
Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation.Collection: Truth
Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.Collection: Truth
There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people. I'm talking about a writer's critics, who don't address what you've written, but want to probe into your existence and magnify the trivia of your life without any sense of humor, without any sense of context.Collection: Humor
Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation.Collection: Politics
Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth.Collection: Truth
But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.Collection: Communication
I don't know any other way to live but to wake up every day armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.Collection: Power
The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.Collection: Freedom
There's no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from which we ourselves have evolved. Naturally, we stress it, break it up, reassemble it to suit our own needs. But it is there - a source of vital strength.Collection: Strength
My father was a schoolteacher, and so I had the advantage of both western educational instruction in the school, as well as what you might call the process of imbibing the traditional processes of education instruction around me.Collection: Education
I love beauty. But I like the beauty accidentally, not dished up, served up on a platter.Collection: Beauty
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.Collection: Religion
I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.Collection: Poetry
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.Collection: Art
I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.Collection: Communication
Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.Collection: Space
One has a responsibility to clean up one's space and make it livable as far as one's own resources go. That includes not only material resources, but psychological resources: the commitment of time and a portion of your mind to something when you'd rather be doing something else.Collection: Space
But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing.Collection: Amazing
Those nations that say it's a crime to preach your religion are making a terrible mistake. All they're doing is driving underground other forms of spiritual intuitions and practices.Collection: Religion
A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts.
The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.
Human life has meaning only to that degree and as long as it is lived in the service of humanity.
I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we'd never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.
You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.'
One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That's what the human family is all about.
Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience. I never know who's influencing me at any time.
The Sudanese government has been playing games with the world, with the Africa Union, in particular, have been playing for time in order to conclude its mission of ethnic cleansing in the Sudan.
You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the shoulders of the living that the burden of justice must continue to rest.
No human is completely fearless.
I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.
Seven is the magic figure, because that's a symbolic figure of my favorite deity, Ogun.
Just like birds, hunters know no borders.
See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.
There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
I am a glutton for tranquility.
Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.
Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.